


Crescendo

by lightsaberlesbian



Series: Humans Fanwork Challenge 2017 [1]
Category: Humans (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 13:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14978459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightsaberlesbian/pseuds/lightsaberlesbian
Summary: Fred wants to evoke emotion, make people feel and bring them together, make them experience things they otherwise wouldn’t. So he makes it his mission to master every musical instrument he can get his hands on in the Elster mansion.





	Crescendo

**Author's Note:**

> Canon Week  
> Day 1: Before the Beginning (Sat 3)  
> Write about something that happened before season 1, episode 1.

Mia is the one that introduces Fred to his first musical instrument. It’s early evening and the sun has just begun to descend, sky glowing red, when the sound of strings fills the mansion. A rapid melody played so flawlessly it certainly has to be a record playing on David’s old gramophone in the living room, but it’s coming from upstairs and he knows that David can’t stand instrumental music. As he climbs the stairs, the rhythm and volume ascends with him, chasing its peak in a breathtaking exuberance. The beautiful crescendo leads him to his sister’s ajar door; mesmerized, he watches her play in a pace so fast and dramatic it couldn’t be physically possible for a normal human, a melody so strikingly beautiful he wouldn’t be able to leave even if David came and threatened to switch him off again. Mia knows he’s there, and Fred knows that she knows. 

After that Fred knows that music is his calling in life. He wants to evoke emotion, make people feel and bring them together, make them experience things they otherwise wouldn’t. So Fred makes it his mission to master every musical instrument he can get his hands on in the mansion.

Niska finds comfort in the sound of the piano. On a good day she sits in one of the leather armchairs by the fireplace, emerged in whatever book she is reading at the moment and Fred plays slow and peaceful tunes for her, classical music calm enough for her to read to. On worse days she sits beside him on the mahogany stool as he plays, resting her head against his shoulder, watching his fingers dance across the keys. They’re always quiet together when he’s playing, whether her mind is busy in a fictional universe somewhere or because she wishes she was. On days when she feels heavier against him than usual, he ends his final refrain by pressing a kiss into her golden hair and remains beside her for as longs as she stays.

Max loves percussion. Any kind of percussion: tambourines, bongo drums, castanets – even the triangle. He find songs to sing along to their rhythms, songs about fire, kings dressed in red and green, about lions and wild animals, wilderness. They sing about tribes, small aggregates of people living outside of the urban society and civilization, families creating their own functional system, not entirely different from the Elsters. By playing together, Max and Fred explore something that could have been their roots, had they been human.

Beatrice likes the flute. She lies in her bed with her eyes closed and a wide smile across her face when Fred plays for her. She says his music reminds her of the wind rustling the leaves of tall trees in the spring, or the waves of the ocean, or birds singing to each other across tree branches. Beatrice isn’t allowed outside very much anymore, it’s not good for her, David says. So whenever Fred plays for her, he opens the windows to really help her feel the fresh air, to really let her hear the sound of nature, to make her not feel like a prisoner held by her own husband in her own home. 

He plays the guitar for Leo, he always has. He’d play him lullabies and nursery rhymes as a toddler and the latest in pop and rock as he became a teenager. When he gets into his twenties, they jam together; Fred on his old Fender and Leo on the cherry red Gibson Memphis he got from his older brother on a birthday once. They’re in the middle of a session of playing silly riffs, goofing around and laughing when they hear the sound of glass breaking somewhere in the house. It used to be a familiar noise; Beatrice liked to throw vases around and breaking mirrors during her meltdowns, but she’s not around anymore. Perhaps it’s Niska throwing a tantrum again or Mia dropped something while making dinner?  
A loud thud, cupboard doors being slammed shut. 

“It’s coming from dad’s lab in the basement,” Leo whispers, listening for any more noise. Another thud, something is thrown against a wall. The two brothers exchange meaning looks, something is wrong, and Leo gets up. “Stay here, Fred.”

When Leo comes running up the stairs they are given ten minutes to pack the bare necessities then rushed out of the house, he promises he will explain but that they need to get a move on and fast at that. 

They’re halfway into the woods when they hear an explosion roar, somehow it reminds him of the powerful crescendo he heard his sister played once. The sound of it fills the woods like her strings did the mansion, but the feeling it gives is not the same. It doesn’t fill him with joy and inspiration this time, this one leaves him empty. He glances at his brother, he thinks he sees him cry. He looks to his sisters who are looking at each other in shock. He looks to the edge of the forest, to where they came from.

It’s early evening and the sun has just begun to descend, but it’s not the sunset that makes the sky glow red this time. It’s their family home, along with their father and all their memories burning, flames ascending towards the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> (I am aware that David Elster didn't actually burn his house down in the series.)


End file.
